Twenty-one big projectiles recently found in a garden in Huong Hoa district, the central province of Quang Tri, have been successfully defused and removed. Peace Trees Vietnam, a U.S. non-governmental organization working on unexploded ordnances (UXOs) search and clearance, moved the UXOs to a safe place to destroy. The projectiles were discovered on September 19 while a resident in Tan Lien commune of Huong Hoa was digging ground for a construction in his garden. After being informed about the UXOs, a mine clearance team from Peace Trees Vietnam found 21 projectiles, each of which is 270mm long and 57mm wide and weighs 2.8kg. Nguyen Van Cuong, head of the team, said the projectiles were defused and will be destroyed on September 22. Earlier, mine clearance workers also detected and handled many other UXOs in the same Tan Lien commune after receiving information from local residents.
Quang Tri is among the provinces heavily affected by UXOs left from wartime. The US army used more than 15 million tons of bombs and mines in the war in Vietnam, four times the amount used in World War II. As a result, Vietnam has been listed among the countries most contaminated with UXOs. According to the State Steering Committee for the national action program on settling post-war bomb and landmine impacts, about 800,000 tons of UXOs are scattered across 6.6 million hectares or 20.12% of Vietnam’s land, mainly in the central region. (VietNamNet Sept 20)
